Part 7.a: The Emperor Lost His Groove

This is going to sound ridiculous, but ever since I watched The Emperor's New Groove as a kid, I've always wanted to visit Peru. Is that strange motivation? Sure. But it's what got me to buy a one way ticket to Lima, Peru, from Cartagena on February 19th, 2022.

I had extremely high expectations and had done literally zero research. I figured that I knew everything necessary: there might be talking llamas.

I was sorely disappointed when I arrived in Lima and realized that it was a total desert. I hate the desert. And there were no talking llamas in sight.

I wandered through Lima, trying to ignore the feeling that I'd made a giant mistake: I was alone again, and in a place that I was disliking more day by day.

The family trauma that I had been pushing back for months was finally bubbling to the surface now that I was alone again, and I spent every night crying myself to sleep. I blamed it on the country, doing anything I could not to confront what was really going on.

"It'll be okay." I told myself. "I'll only be here for two weeks, and then I'll go find the magical Peru with talking llamas." Okay, maybe I didn't still have hope that I was going to find the Emperor's New Groove Peru of my dreams, but I wasn't giving up that I might find somewhere in Peru that I loved.

I got on a bus and traversed through the Peruvian desert for a couple of hours, arriving next in Ica. This town is famous for its sandsurfing, but I didn't do anything touristy. I basically went out to eat and stayed in my private hostel room. A total missed opportunity, but Peru was really wearing on me.

At this point I was starting to freak out. I had found nothing I liked about Peru, and Mama was coming in a couple of weeks to meet me here and stay for another month. On my suggestion, we were going to spend four more weeks in a country I was growing to despise.

I headed to my last stop on my Peru tour, Nazca, a week later. Nazca is a super small town in the middle of desert mountains. There's almost nothing to do there, and you'd think that I would've hated that. Wrong. For the first time since getting to Peru, I was actually enjoying myself.

It's true that there wasn't much to do, but I loved the feel of a tiny little town. It felt safe and more like I was living somewhere rather than just vacationing. Everything was much cheaper than in the touristy locations I'd been visiting, and I spent a lot of time walking the length of the town over and over again.

Mama sent me incredible pictures from her month on the beautiful island of San Andres (go read her blog) and I couldn't believe my bad luck. She was in the crystal clear Caribbean, I was in the foggy desert. At the same time, I felt so ungrateful. How many people got the chance to do what I was doing? Why couldn't I stop crying?

I talked to Mama and Nicholas on the phone constantly, and was so happy to see Mama in just a handful of days. The seven hour bus ride back to Lima was awful, especially because I got super carsick, but knowing that I was going to meet Mama when I got there made it all worthwhile.